Linkathon!…
Jerry Falwell Jr. has a racy yacht party…he’ll lie and be unscathed…evangelicals excuse this sort of thing.
Getting history right with John Fea…especially if you need to unlearn history from David Barton…
Should churches in California defy government restrictions?
Pastor rages at Dunkin Donuts over wearing a mask...this guy has a history that should have defrocked him long ago…but same story as #1…
Harvest Crusade will be a cinematic extravaganza this year…obviously because great ministries should produce extravaganzas…
A Christian response to Covid19… because our responses are different…
Julie Anne’s personal mental health journey…
California churches react differently…MacArthur vs. Laurie…
Why are so many Christians falling for QAnon?….I’ll go to my grave not understanding this…
Billy Graham statue to replace white supremacist in U.S. Capital…
The forgotten female disciples of Jesus…
Big thanks to EricL and Reader Hill for the link help!
Should Churches in California Defy Government Restrictions?”
It’s a damn shame that some churches see themselves and act as just another interest group or protest group in a political process.
Is that the best that the Christian church in America has going for it during a pandemic?
I get that a mega church can’t possibly pastor its flock in a pandemic safely. But, if their honest, they never pastored a flock before the pandemic either. There’s a huge difference between lecturing an auditorium on how to live a moral life and pastoring. Maybe they should look at their models. Maybe they should discover how to become a witness for good and a beacon of hope and servants of mercy during a pandemic.
This pandemic has not extinguished either the Gospel or its proclamation. No government order has precluded the exercise of Christianity nor the proclamation of the Gospel. The pandemic has created health risks of meeting in congregate settings, especially indoors, without masks and distancing. Instead of pouting about it, or blaming government, or embracing conspiracies, how about demonstrate God’s love to people who are hurting in so many ways, mental, educational, financial, medical, etc.? Christ was a physician and a servant. That’s what pastors are here for, to care for and serve the souls in their churches.
No governor, or pastor, or scientist or any other leader or official is perfect. We submit to authorities, whether an employer, a business owner, a pastor or a governor, not because every decision they make is infallible or even the best, but because, and this is really important to understand, even flawed rules and laws are vastly superior to lawlessness and anarchy.
Jean
You are kinder than I am these days. I see the examples of Falwell, Locke, MacArthur and their ilk and wonder what they have to do with Christian faith, much less the Church…
I think I have rage-aphobia – my rage glands are depleted.
I am always exhausted and probably clinically depressed from the current affairs…I have no idea how people can stay angry every day and sustain it…
Hi Duane,
When the pandemic first started, my prayer was that, “Hey, here is our (i.e., the church’s) chance to be a light in the world.” To lead by example. To support the neighbor. To demonstrate the resilience of the church in difficult times.
What an idiot I was. To the contrary, I have found that the biggest spreaders of disinformation has been by self-professing Christians! Now our leading lights want to lead the protests against our government and safety! Not just protests; they want to lead the defiance of our government!
How did Joseph prosper in Egypt? How did Daniel and his friends proper in Babylon? How did Nehemiah prosper in Persia? Obviously they had faith.
On the other hand, we have the full Word of God, the full revelation of the Gospel. We should be in a far better place than our fathers ever were to not just endure but prosper in this pandemic. By comparison to past exiles, plagues, wars, etc., Covid-19 is a mosquito bite relative to the Christian faith (I fully acknowledge the tremendous tragedy of the pandemic on individual families from loss of income or health, mental and physical). But to many in current Christendom the church is being oppressed to death. What have we come to?
“We should be in a far better place than our fathers ever were to not just endure but prosper in this pandemic.”
If we cared one iota about church history or the health of the church you’d be right on…however…
QAnon/conspiracy theories/masks….geez we Christians have to looks like the biggest dolts and ignoramuses out there. But like I said before, I think people have to have some control over their lives and environment, and they need a scapegoat for the problems of the world (cf Democrats/BLM/gays/etc). And sometimes I think our society is dumbing down at a fast rate.
Sometimes a pandemic is just a pandemic.
My wife RARELY looks at the news and is a joyful person. I look at the news quite often (read: more than a few times daily) and I am sad and angry and fearful a lot. And my response to my wife is “I don’t like not knowing what is going on in the world”. I envy her.
Locke/Falwell jr/et all…sick that they keep getting a pass (understatement of the year).
Dan,
I think I have to keep up so I can be of help to folks who take this stuff in…but it’s taking a huge toll. Time to reassess…
Falwell Jr should come out and explain this photo. That kind of stupidity usually requires some spirited beverages to facilitate. He’s being an idiot to be photographed. That the woman was conjectured as his daughter yesterday was creepy that it is not is unseemly.
He needs to answer questions… what we see is bad. It’s worse than bad
Jean
“What have we come to?”
The prophecy of the desert Father, Antony the Great, has come to pass: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us’.”
“Keith Giles is a former pastor who left the pulpit over a decade ago to follow Jesus” which always presumes that’s some kind of feat… so this guy just now discovered these forgotten women? I do get amused by people who try to awaken us all by their enlightenment. I should return my grumpiness to my own narrower window.
BD,
I don’t think it was his daughter. As for that dark liquid, yes it was beer. That being said, there were many people on this billionaire’s yacht dressed similarly. Then there always Falwell’s “Pool Boy” / “Business Partner”. Much like FL GOP never-married Congressman Matt Gaetz and his adult adopted “son” Nestor…
“I think I have to keep up so I can be of help to folks who take this stuff in…but it’s taking a huge toll. Time to reassess…”
I try to help myself and others by disengaging and encouraging others to do the same. When an addition to poison is completely psychological, it’s not unkind to encourage our friends to stop taking it.
Good word Jim!
If I recall correctly (and I probably don’t)…my very first comment on this blog a number of years ago had something to do with something about how much rage can one handle. I think one commenter (don’t remember who, but that is not the point) took me to task for asking how much is too much. I believe my posting was a few years before Trump was elected in 2016. Anyways, I think the question is more the appropriate these days.
For me, I am increasingly noticing a pattern of behavior and thinking when consuming too much news/negative information. I find myself more down and somber, for example. I have to find what my limit is.
I get that a woman might feel more comfortable (or sexy) with the unbuttoned pants, but what’s up with Falwell, _much less thinking it was appropriate to post publicly?_ Nevermind the whole situation. Trying to unsee that. Even from a non Christian view, low class.
CCSJ still meeting in defiance of state orders… with no discernible safety protocols to boot. I don’t know where I’ll return to next year, maybe trying my former Lutheran background?
Dan from GA,
Perhaps a maximum exposure limit in the course of an 8 hour day, kind of like what OSHA does for chemical hazards?
Being a weather guy, what was your take on Isaias? It was quite the fast mover. Up here in MA, it blew through NE at a good 40+ MPH. Mostly a rain event where I was, winds gusting to 40 mph or so.
CM,
Ha! Maybe social media/news needs some regulation? Nah…personal boundaries is best option.
yeah, Isaias caused way more damage with winds and tornadoes than with rain and flooding. Usually with most tropical storms and hurricanes, its flooding via storm-surge or heavy rains that cause the most misery (see Katrina for New Orleans, and Hurricane Harvey for Houston, TX…this storm by the way set the U.S. rainfall record of 60.58 inches of rain at Nederland, TX for a tropical system). A co-worker of mine has parents who live near Farmingdale, NY, and that area sustained quite a lot of wind damage…mainly trees falling on cars and structures. Winds were close to 80mph at KFRG airport. Tropical systems tend to pick up speed once they make landfall…quite impressive that it went from the Carolina coastline to northern Maine the next day!
Thanks for the added details. Do you think it spawned so many tornadoes because it was such as fast-mover and its velocity caused all kinds of instabilities along the boundary of its path?
You’re welcome. Tornadoes become a greater possibility when a tropical system moves over land because the wind field from the surface on up becomes more sheared (i.e., winds start to move in different directions as you go up), with the increase in shear primarily caused my the system moving over land (more obstacles, uneven terrain, and hence increased friction) and perhaps moving closer to the jet stream.
Hurricane Beulah (can’t remember the year offhand) produced over 100 tornadoes when it came ashore someone along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
Some tropical systems produce little to no tornado activity. Tropical storm/hurricane spawned tornadoes rarely are the strong or violent type you see videos of on the Weather Channel that plague the central U.S.
Lastly, under the category of “more than I need to know” (hehe)…Hurricane Andew in 1992 produced a wind gust of 164mph at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL, and right after that the wind instrument and Doppler radar at the site were destroyed.
I see to remember that about Andrew. It recorded the reading and the instrument was promptly blow off its mounting.
That is one of the few details I remember hearing about as well back then!
The late Dr. Ted Fujita, who has contributed greatly to the science of winds in tornadoes, has posited that some of the most intense instances of damage from Andrew were cause by what he called “mini-swirls”, which I believe he theorized may have briefly (on the order of a few seconds at most) reached 200mph. As far as I know this has not be officially accepted, but in a “post-game” analysis (done in 2004), researchers determined winds were as strong as 175mph at the surface in the Bahamas, so Andrew was promoted from a CAT 4 to a CAT 5.
OK I’m done geeking out.